Originally Posted by Heath
Are you a geezer or a businessperson?
Are you a geezer or a businessperson?
He's a charter member of the "Get Off My Lawn" club, i.e. all of us crabby old guys that remember when Abner Doubleday played and fall asleep in mid-sentence.Are you a geezer or a businessperson?
She used to wake me up with coffee ever morning
Ah yes that was me. Allow me to explain what I mean.(and remember all the numbers are fictional but represent an overall trend.)
Let's say you have a pool of 500,000 who are interested enough to go to a game.
Let's say 2% of those people have the interest and the money and buy tickets. (10,000 people and 810,000 tickets sold.)
Let's say 10% of those people have the interest but can't quite afford season tickets and purchase a bakers dozen package of 13 games, (50,000 people and 650,000 additional tickets sold.)
Let's say 10% of the pool is a little less interested or has a little bit less cash to spend so they purchase 5 tickets before the season. (50,0000 and another 250,000 tickets sold.) So right now you're at 1,710,000 before the season starts.
Let's say 25% of the people purchase 2 games tickets. (125000 people and only 250,000 extra tickets sold.)
Let's say 30% of the people purchase 1 game. The one game per season. (150,000 people and 150,000 additional tickets.)
The problem is that good play within a season only increases those last two groups. If say 50,000 people go to 6 games instead of 5, it still has the same impact as 50,000 new people purchasing one ticket. And 50,000 people is a large number of people to convince to purchase 1 more ticket.
And that 50,000 number probably was convinced to buy one more ticket to see the Cardinals games in August, and the Cubs games at the end of April, and Pirates series(there was a lot of people coming for those games) that you simply can't tap that list of people again and again and again.
So how do you increase attendance?
1) Increase the pool of people. If you're dealing with a pool of 1,000,000 every number on the list gets larger.
2) Increase the number of people who were buying Baker's Dozen packages to purchase Season Tickets. If you got 5,000 people to switch from Baker's Dozen packages to Season Ticket packages, you'd have an additional 4,097 people PER GAME.
But even if you increase the attendance by 500,000 people from this year to next. You're still going to sell out Opening Day, the Cubs weekend series (or two) a couple of bobblehead nights, the Cards series in August if both teams are in it. So add that all up, and most nights in September against less than stellar opposition will have maybe 20K people max.
Yahoo just posted a related story this morning.
http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/blog/big...urn=mlb-269565
Admittedly, this won't do much to stop the fans in bigger (New York, Los Angeles) and more cultish (St. Louis, Milwaukee) markets from mocking the smaller markets for their turnstile counts. And maybe it shouldn't. When a Detroit team experiencing a down season in one of America's worst economies can still draw an average of 5,000 more fans a game than some of the best teams in the league, you're going to be ripe for criticism.
I can guarantee you that the extra tickets in Detroit were sold in February and March, when the fan base thought the Tigers would fight for a playoff spot and World Series Title.
RFS ain't got nothing on me....Are you a geezer or a businessperson?
Some people play baseball. Baseball plays Jay Bruce.
Indeed, much like Pittsburgh
Baseball town? *giggle*
Go Gators!
Comparing Cincinnati to Pittsburgh is not only an insult but blasphemy. Pittsburghers could care less about the Pirates. They live for the Stillers. The don't support Pitt or anything else but their NFL thugs. At least in Cincy, they know their baseball and like it. And besides, the Bengals aren't that good most of the time. High school? Yep almost everywhere.Indeed, much like Pittsburgh
Baseball town? *giggle*
I hate football.
www.ris-news.com
"You only have to bat a thousand in two things; flying and heart transplants. Everything else you can go 4-for-5."
-Beano Cook
Why is the Reds attendance so poor? Especially this late in the year. If this was any other year in the 2000s, I'd understand. You have a team with a winning record for the first time in 11 years. A young team that that is ridiculously exciting. Votto a potential MVP candidate, Jay Bruce who has come on recently, Stubbs who has killed it recently, Cueto the young phenom and Chapmania, who might be the most exciting pitcher currently in baseball to watch plus a bunch of other young players yet, I watch the home games and the place is anywhere from half to empty to more than half empty. What gives? Have fans given up on Reds baseball? Is Cincinnati Bengals country now?
I know that school is back in session, I know the Reds recently have played uninteresting teams at home, I know the economy is still in bad shape but that seems like an excuse. The weather has been gorgeous this month as well. If fans want the team to spend more money and continue to become more competitive, attendance is the best way to aid the franchise with that.
Cincinnati has the 2nd worst attendance of any team in contention (worst is San Diego).
So what is the deal?
It's not really a new thing
http://www.baseball-reference.com/te...N/attend.shtml
It's funny to see the Reds are only 100 fans off of what they got in in 1995.
Go Gators!
Exactly right Krono.
"In my day you had musicians who experimented with drugs. Now it's druggies experimenting with music" - Alfred G Clark (circa 1972)
I'd say 1995 is hardly a fair comparison since that was the first season after the strike when tons of fans were still in their "I'm never going to a baseball game again" mode. Even still, your September weeknight/day attendance then at least was consistently in the 18-21k range. I don't see any 12k games in there. And that includes games against the Cardinals, Expos and Marlins, all of whom had losing records.
A better look would be at 1994, another year the team was contending. That year they were averaging 31,628 per game.
Of course, you could always say that one is misleading too since that average did not include September numbers due to the strike and the fact that it was only 4 years removed from winning the World Series.
The economy isn't helping much, and I wouldn't be taking my kids to weeknight games once school starts.
Next Reds manager, second shooter. --Confirmed on Redszone.
I expect that the Reds are disappointed by the attendance, which could lend itself to an argument that there is little financial advantage to having a contending team. However I do expect an increase in attendance next year. Sometimes game attendance is a "lagging indicator" of how the team is doing, with attendance increasing the year after a successful season.
"Hey...Dad. Wanna Have A Catch?" Kevin Costner in "Field Of Dreams."
Most teams that have been down for a while, then have a good season don't see the bump up in attendance until the next season. If they are drawing the same or worse next season then, if I were Castellini, I would be very concerned. I think the economy and a losing decade are main factors in the generally poor attendance this season.
Reds Fan Since 1971
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